Altavista, or Azaenegue

View west from the viewpoint, La Aldea de San Nicolás to the left

A walk along the crest of Altavista, or Azaenegue in aboriginal language, towards a viewpoint on the end closer to La Aldea is one of the easy and beautiful linear walks in the vicinity of Artenara village, on the edge of Tamadaba nature park. It does have some ascents, with the corresponding descents, but they are as light as they go on the island. There is no getting lost either. The only problem here is the transport to the start of the walk, the same as in nearly all of the walks to the west of Artenara. Once again, driving, or being driven, is the most realistic option for a one-day trip. But, unlike Faneque, you can do it if you stay in Artenara village; you can even do the longer version of the walk starting in Artenara and using the public transport, but you will have yourself a very tiresome day.

Faneque behind the solitary pine. The pine was burnt partially in the Valleseco wildfire in 2019

Faneque, the first attempt

Faneque, as seen from Tamadaba campsite viewpoints. Teide floating serenely on his cushion of clouds

Faneque, the tallest above-sea cliff in Europe, is always very prominent when you are in the northwest of Gran Canaria. It looks infinitely majestic and quite, quite forbidding. The side view gives you an impression of a series of three plateaus, separated by sharp V-shaped drops. Plus, people always talk about “the last platform” or “the last point”, which contributes to the same impression. It’s not really true, of which later.

Gran Canaria after forest fire 2019, Cruz de Tejeda — Artenara

These pines kept their needles, although they are dry and yellow. I think they have a good chance of recovery.

I was hoping to never write this kind of report again, but it was not to be.

Only two years after the fire which started inside Caldera de Tejeda and burned the Parador de Tejeda hotel, and despite the controlled burns in the central areas of Gran Canaria, another fire ran through the tops of the island, Las Cumbres. Several fires, to be precise, one of them, tagged in social media with #IFValleseco, especially big.

Pico de la Bandera — San Pedro

View into the Valle de Agaete from the trail. There is a whole chain of reservoirs down there, some at alarmingly different levels from each other

This was our first but hopefully not last experience with Mojo Picón Aventura, a small company dedicated to outdoor activities on our beautiful island. Apart from their regular weekday activities such as canyoning (barranquismo), coasteering and kayaking, they also organise walks on weekends. So the last Saturday of September we joined one. It was advertised as a medium-difficulty 9-km route "Pico de la Bandera — Berrazales" which was supposed to take about 6 hours. The price was 10 euro per person; considering that we would spend the same or more on public transport if we wanted to do the same route on our own, it looked like a great value for money.

We had to come by 8:30 am to Auditorio Alfredo Kraus, which appears to be a popular meeting place for weekend outings. There were at least two other groups assembling there at the same time.